An intrepid No Man’s Sky explorer shared their unexpected discovery of what could be the real-life dwarf planet Pluto with the community, prompting amusement from the game’s fans. Since releasing in 2016, No Man’s Sky has attracted millions of players to its playable universe to explore and build.
If there’s one habit veteran No Man’s Sky players learn, it’s expecting the unexpected. That’s because developer Hello Games’ exploration-focused opus uses procedural generation to create one of the largest open world game maps around, spread across approximately 18 quintillion planets to explore. That makes the chance of any two players having exactly the same journey very small. In addition, the procedural nature of the game’s planet creation system also makes finding something that actually exists in real life unlikely.
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That said, it’s not impossible, as shown by player ItsGK, who shared their discovery of a world called “Pluto” with the No Man’s Sky Reddit community. Encountered randomly during a typical in-game session, the previously undiscovered world ItsGK discovered just happened to share a name with the real-life celestial body sitting on the edge of Earth’s Solar System. Once considered the ninth planet in the Solar System, Pluto was reclassified as a “dwarf planet” by the International Astronomical Union in 2006, owing to its low mass and placement in the Solar System’s Kuiper belt. No Man’s Sky‘s version of Pluto, however, is not only a planet, but a potential Paradise Planet, bearing resources like Star Bulbs and Paraffinium, as well as inhabited Xeno-Colonies.
No Man’s Sky players in the subreddit were amused by ItsGK’s discovery, and celebrated the sheer coincidence that the game would apply the name of a real-life object to one of its randomly generated planets. Some were also astonished by the fact that the in-game version of Pluto had a primarily red-and-blue color scheme when seen from orbit. The in-game planet’s coloration seemingly matched photos of the real Pluto taken by NASA’s New Horizons probe and recolored by the agency using enhanced saturation. One drew a contrast between the decidedly lively No Man’s Sky version of Pluto with the more realistic interpretation of Pluto that players can visit in Starfield, which has few resources, no atmosphere, and is incapable of supporting life.
One player suggested that No Man’s Sky‘s procedural generation system might be “seeded” with some preset planet templates that resemble existing celestial bodies, making it possible to discover an in-game world that mirrors a real one. They showed off a Reddit post from 2019 where a player discovered another “Pluto” planet with similar blue-and-red coloration, lending evidence to the theory.
A few players made jokes referencing Warhammer 40,000 and Helldivers, declaring that the presence of aliens on Pluto was a convenient cause for war. They demanded that Space Marine groups like the Deathwatch be deployed, calling on ItsGK to establish a base there to serve as a foothold for purging “Pluto” of alien influence.
No Man’s Sky
7/10
- Released
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August 9, 2016
- ESRB
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T for Teen: Fantasy Violence, Animated Blood
- Engine
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Proprietary
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